The histories of 319 patients were reviewed, divided into a group of 100 women and 100 men, admitted to the hospital between 1920 and 1940 before electric shock treatment was used, and a group of 119 patients, 69 women and 50 men, admitted consecutively between 1940 and 1950, when electric shock treatment was available.Almost nine-tenths of these patients suffered from involutional psychosis (melancholia), slightly more than 10 per cent from the paranoid form of involutional psychosis. As a group, these patients were well above average in intelligence and had, with few exceptions, superior educational and cultural opportunities. The average age at admission of the women was 52, the men 57, with an age range of 38-72 for the women and 45-71 for the men.A review of the family history of these patients revealed mental disorders (psychoses, neuroses, alcoholism, psychopathic personalities) among close relatives in just under one-half of the patients with depressive reactions predominating. In slightly over 10 per cent of the patients there was history of suicide among antecedents. In male patients the suicides were overwhelming among male relatives; among female patients the incidence of suicide on the maternal side was four times greater than that among male forebears. One man had three brothers who suicided in their sixth decade.Both men and women patients enjoyed relatively good health in
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